“Good Things Stick Around!” Parcels Interviewed

Bassist Noah Hill reflects on the Australian five-piece taking things into dancier ...

Ask anyone who’s seen Parcels play live and they’ll tell you that no one else puts on a show quite like it.

Having relocated from  Byron Bay early in their career, the Berlin-based Aussies have quickly established themselves as one of the most dependable live acts on the planet in the space of less than a decade. 

It’s in no small part thanks to the stellar ‘Live Vol. 1’, which followed their 2018 self-titled studio debut. Aside from being a phenomenal listen in its own right, Vol. 1 became compulsive pandemic viewing. Filmed just prior to lockdown at the legendary Hansa Studios, it served as a spectacular showcase of the group’s musicianship and would cement their reputation as a must-see live act once the world started to open up again.

For Live Vol. 2, the group have switched things up, moving from the studio to the frenetic, though no less intimate setting of the Le Palace nightclub in Paris. Recorded in front of a live audience at a secret one-off gig, it sees the group deconstructing slower melodic tracks from their ambitious double album ‘Day/Night’ and reconstructing them for the dancefloor, alongside a selection of bouncy new tracks.

The end result is yet another thrilling showcase of the band’s musicianship and an exciting taste of things yet to come.

Paul Weedon caught up with bassist Noah Hill to discuss the process of putting the album together and the unconscious influence of their former collaborators, Daft Punk.

Your 2022 live shows felt like a real taste of things to come with Live Vol. 2. Had you always intended to venture into dancier territory?

I feel like it was something we were almost holding off on. For years, we kept saying how much Berlin hadn’t influenced our music and that we weren’t really influenced by Berlin. In the end, I think it’s just something that has sunk in so deeply, from spending so much time there and, for many of the guys, just getting so deep into club culture and dance culture. At the same time, that’s what felt right for us. It’s what worked for us touring. In live dynamics, there’s no live feedback, like dancing, you know? That was just something that we had the most fun with. We slowly kind of vortexed our way into this realisation that we could combine all these things that we had experienced, both in Berlin and out on the road playing gigs. It was this natural occurrence.

How much are you guys communicating on stage, or is everything so well rehearsed at this point?

Well, that’s something that’s changed over time. In the past, we rehearsed so rigorously that I could count the beats in my sleep. There was a rigidity to it that in the end, over long periods of touring that kind of lost a bit of flair for us. So for ‘Day/Night’, we made a conscious effort to change that up and for every night to be somewhat different. And that really pissed our lighting guy and sound guy off to no end, because they just can’t sync stuff up, but it was that spontaneity that we wanted. The way in which we practised was more about reading each other musically, being able to respond to change, to flow, to improvise all on stage. You end up kind of slotting into a routine and you do similar things. Obviously, you play the songs and they have a certain structure to them, but we very much allowed ourselves to play outside of that structure for the last tour and it felt really freeing.

Were you kind of surprised that it took as long as it did for the sound of Berlin to have the influence that did?

I think we went over there without knowing truly what the city was about. We didn’t realise how consumed it was with dance music and club culture. It was a real fluke in some ways that we ended up there, only having heard that it was a cool, affordable city, but we didn’t really know what the art scene or the music scene was like. Over those first few years, we either didn’t understand it, or we fought it, or we just weren’t in that place. It takes a certain amount of time to understand that kind of music, because it’s so specific. It’s so kind of simple, yet there’s a very subtle art to it that really divides the great techno house from the mundane. Perhaps it took just a lot of experiences in and amongst it before we could really accept ourselves as part of that world, or even believe that we had any knowledge of it… We just felt like washed up surfer kids when we got there and I think it’s taken us like this long to get outside of what we knew and into something different. Now Berlin’s really sunken into everyone’s lives in a big way… It’s like a tip of the hat to the city.

You’re currently based in Australia yourself. How does the writing process work at the moment, with you guys being dotted around the globe?

We’ve all kind of been riding solo, demoing mostly, over the last like nine months. We’re going to Mexico and we’re gonna go to a studio. We’re just starting that process of coming together and seeing what we’ve got. We took a huge break because we were just so tired after touring and now we’re creeping our way back in and sharing new material. We’re gonna start getting into studios and seeing where it flows.

‘Live Vol. 2’ features five reworked tracks. It’s one thing to deconstruct a studio track to play it live, but here you were ripping stuff apart and reconstructing it from scratch to fit this new style. How did you find that process?

It was an interesting one. Part of it started on the tour. We actually wrote some of those dance versions in sound checks on the American tour early last year. We knew that there were parts missing inside the show. We were never 100% satisfied with what we had in the first few shows. There’s often a big improvement in the first three or four shows. We realised that we needed more, and we realised this is what we wanted to go into. We knew we needed more of the ‘Day/Night’ tracks. We wanted to bring in new songs, but the ones that we had just didn’t fit inside this concept that we had – they were too soft, or they were too sombre. We couldn’t really justify putting them into the set and, naturally, it led us to look at them and wonder what they could be. 

Reflex’ was released as the lead single. That evolved from a ballad into a house track.

Yeah, songs like ‘Reflex’ always had that feeling. That chorus, for us, always had that feeling of grandeur and this really kind of epicness to it. It always felt like it could be one of those awesome house bangers that was just this one repeating message that felt like it said so much. You’re right – we were just pulling these songs apart and jamming on them during soundcheck and working on them show over show over show, before we slotted these new versions into the set and played them to the point where they had become their own thing, just reimagined.

Were there any tracks that you tried to rework that didn’t quite land?

I mean, ‘Something Greater’ was one that we thought could work in that sense too. And we actually had ‘Something Greater’ on the setlist for ‘Live Vol. 2’, but we just didn’t get there in the end. The main chorus line of ‘Something Greater’ always had that feeling. With dance music, if you’re ever gonna add vocals, it has to have this larger than life feel and this repetitive one line that is able to permeate it and say something large. We tried and we got close on that song, but that never worked. There were definitely a few others that we tried and scrapped. It was a big process.

When you hear about tracks that get put to the side, it might just be a case that you abandon them, but I get the sense that they end up becoming itches that need to be scratched.

Yeah, it’s funny. I heard James Blake talking about that the other day. He was releasing this song that he wrote 10 years ago, or something – back in his dance music days. I think it’s true. I look back on either old demos that I’ve written, or I go back and hear old demos that the other guys have written that never made it onto the record. I still hear them and think, ‘Wow, they’re amazing,’ and that they could work, but they’re not necessarily of that time. Good songs and good things stick around. You can always pull them back from the dead, you know? They’re just sitting there, waiting to be called upon.

Hansa Studios is steeped in history. Recording there must have been an incredible experience. ‘Live Vol. 2’ was recorded in a Parisian nightclub in front of an audience. They’re both very different vibes. How did the two compare? 

‘Live Vol. 2’ was so much more stressful. Man, it was so stressful. With ‘Live Vol. 1’, it was much less organised, much less pressure. We didn’t know what it was going to be, or whether people were going to like it. We got it thrown together towards the end of the tour. I remember not feeling super excited about it. I remember saying, ‘Okay, yeah, we’ll do this thing’. We were so tired by that stage and the show had been perfected, that just throwing us into a world class studio, we were able to get this amazing thing.

‘Live Vol. 1’ just happened so much more naturally. ‘Live Vol. 2’ was this huge concept and idea and organisation and stress. We tried to do it in New York originally, but it got cancelled because one of the guys got COVID. We had the production team, all these people had flown in and it was this huge deal. We were going to do it at Brooklyn Steel and that got called off, so we almost didn’t do it. In the end, we decided to commit and I’m really glad we did. Every time I look at it, I go, ‘This is something cool’. It’s something I hadn’t seen before. Maybe it’s not what all the fans want, or something that’s going to be commercially successful, but I still look at it and I just think it’s cool. 

The crowd must have had a huge impact too.

The crowd was really important for that. ‘Live Vol. 1’ was such a sterile kind of studio environment. It was clean and precise and it was about us, visually. For dance music, it’s kind of about turning the camera on to the crowd more than anything and it’s about the crowd. It’s like with DJs in a dark room, it’s less about the DJ and it’s much more about the crowd. It’s more about that faceless euphoria. It’s a group experience that you have on a dance floor. So in that essence, it was essential to be in a club with a crowd and to try and cultivate that kind of energy.

‘Live Vol. 1’ has clocked up almost 10 million views on YouTube now. Were you surprised by how much it resonated with people during COVID?

Yeah, really surprised. It caught us all a bit off guard, how much it became this thing that fans liked. It’s funny, because it’s not where we’re at right now, but we were very pleasantly surprised with how that worked out… What it made us do is try not to think too much about things, because we thought very little about that and it ended up being probably more successful than our actual debut album, which we slaved away over and put so much effort into making sure everything was perfect. Sometimes, I think that that kind of tension and strictness in your approach ends up being counterproductive and Live Vol. 1 was just a real natural thing. Its success, with the fans anyway, made us realise that it’s better just to try and let things flow and be as organic as possible.

‘Overnight’ ended up being the last de facto Daft Punk project before their split in 2021. I wondered what it means for you guys now, especially as you’re moving into dancier territory yourselves. It feels like you’re carrying the torch to some extent now.

Yeah, I guess that’s all in a matter of perspective, because I feel like we probably don’t see it that way. I think it would be too generous to say that we’re carrying a torch in any sense. They’re kind of in and of themselves and were doing things with music that were just so unique and amazing, in a way that only they could do it. The experience with them was awesome and we take stuff with us, but it would be unwise to think about it in that way. 

I totally get that.

I have thought about it a little bit. You know, they started in dance music and moved into pop music and seemingly we’ve kind of started in pop music and are transitioning into dance music right now. It’s a funny reverse journey at this point, which I’ve thought about. It’s almost like we are subconsciously mirroring them, to some degree, because of how much of an influence they were on us during the Overnight writing period and everything. It’s a blessing. Whatever it is, it’s been helpful.

Did you guys know that they were going to be there when you played the club in Paris the night you first met them?

Yeah, we knew that they were coming. We got told before playing. It was pretty nerve wracking. I remember the night. I remember seeing them in this little VIP booth watching us from the left side of the stage… I think during that period, everything was bizarre and exciting and new. It was hard to quantify something that incredible and special happening. At the time we were just kids. It was my first time ever being in Paris and it was all just bizarre and crazy. It’s amazing how it all turned out.

‘Live Vol. 2’ is available now via Because.

Words: Paul Weedon / @twotakap
Photo Credit: Spyros Rennt